Minutes of November 19, 2009 Meeting

Agenda Item 1) Next steps after the October Symposium

It was agreed that issues raised in the symposium should be brought to other venues. Departmental
meetings or less formal gatherings were seen as a good place to start, and it was agreed that
materials for distribution would be needed as informational handouts. Three handouts were identified
as useful: RUcore brochure (in development), Copyrights brochure and Open Access handout. Bob will
make sure that these get into the regular distribution process to all libraries.

Agenda Item 2) Harry Glazer: RUcore brochure

Harry was a guest at the meeting to talk about the brochure he was asked to prepare for the teaching
faculty on RUcore. Marianne asked that it be ready by February. The draft was discussed, and some
changes to wording and layout were suggested. It was agreed that emphasizing the possibility that
depositing in RUcore would increase the impact of faculty research was important, and that language to
this effect should appear prominently in the brochure. Rhonda agreed to work with Harry to incorporate
the suggestions, mindful of the fact that not all faculty are thrilled about the prospect of higher
web visibility, given fears that their work might be "stolen." Bob agreed to be the point-person for
this brochure, and to distribute the draft to CSC for additional comments. After CSC approves the
brochure, it will be put on the agenda of the December council meetings.

Agenda Item 3) Jim Niessen: Outreach to History Department re: RUcore

Jim visited to talk about his experience doing outreach to the History faculty about RUcore. After
being invited by the new department chair to talk about RUcore, he gave a presentation at the
departmental meeting. Before the presentation, he did some research into the issues to which faculty
might be most receptive. He found that the current RUcore faculty deposits show no correspondence
between participation in RUcore deposits and the Faculty Survey or promotion and tenure. He therefore
made no effort to push this argument onto the faculty. He did bring handouts: a printout from the SC
page, the copyright decision tree on submitting work, and the RUcore faculty deposits submission
forms. The faculty chair mentioned at the meeting that the university was concerned about making
faculty research more visible, and that RUcore and the Faculty Survey were two ways in which this was
being promoted.

Some of the History Department faculty concerns expressed (CSC discussion in parentheses):

Authors should be able to identify their article as peer reviewed.

Full-text search capability of deposited documents is a must, as the repository becomes more relevant if Google can search the full-text.
(Jeffrey mentioned that currently only dissertations in RUcore are full-text searchable.)

Copyright issues seem tricky to faculty, and guidance was requested. Faculty want clerical assistance for clearing rights. David Greenberg wondered why RU couldn't provide blanket support for copyright clearance in order to get all RU content into RUcore.
(Jeanne mentioned that currently faculty can write to her or to
copyright@rutgers.edu, an email address she shares with Elizabeth Minott, Associate General Counsel, to schedule a departmental presentation. She also noted that the bookstore already provides clearance assistance for coursepacks and charges a fee. There is a non-compete contract for this service. She will look into the status of the contract.)

Will open-access endanger the importance of scholarly journals in my field?
(Jim responded to this question at the meeting by saying that the ongoing change was incremental, not revolutionary. Rhonda remarked that RUcore alone will have a negligible effect, but that over all the trend will indeed have an effect that the faculty should prepare for)

There were concerns about non-Rutgers depositories: what about duplication and redundancy?
(It was noted that perhaps the stable platform/preservation is an argument as to why depositing in RUcore might be preferable. Jeanne noted that we only ask for non-exclusive rights.)

Jim is considering a follow-up brown bag lunch at the History Department. He noted that repeated
pitches will be necessary in order to increase deposits and support for a mandate on deposits.

Agenda Item 1, Continued: Next Steps

It was agreed that guidelines need to be developed for liaisons to talk to departments about
depositing in RUcore. Once the RUcore brochure is ready, departmental visits by liaisons would be
ideal. Jeanne suggested inviting liaisons who had faculty members at the Symposium to meet with CSC
and have Jim discuss his outreach experiences.

It was agreed that Symposium registrants who left comments should be contacted directly ASAP.

It was suggested that Marianne bring RUcore to the attention of the Dean's Council and ask them to
bring the information back to their constituencies.

Whatever information campaign is launched about RUcore, it is clear that we must have a clear goal in
mind. This could ultimately be a faculty resolution on institutional deposits in the style of
Harvard's mandate. However, we would not necessarily want to mention this first, but only gradually
after more information is provided to faculty.

To make depositing easier, a short video tutorial (such as the one already in use for ETDs) was
suggested.

In a separate discussion, it was noted that CSC could take on the effort to change the 1-A and 1-L.
Currently the section for electronic publications is listed separately from peer-reviewed
publications. It was agreed that this does not reflect the current model for scholarly communication,
and that changing this is very important. Bob will discuss with Marianne.